“[We were] in Twitter jail in the first few hours. We launched [Constable Shaw’s] personal account and posted on Facebook asking people to follow him … while our account was suspended.”

Police, like the city council and other civic services, tweeted essential flood information as it came in, but really racked up the tweets responding to users’ individual questions.

“We had a little bit more manpower [than the city] and we were able to answer questions and really respond,” Stephenson said.

Ironically, it was Twitter that got police out of jail.

“Calgarians took it upon themselves to tweet Twitter and ask them to unlock out account,” Stephenson said.

“I think it was within an hour our account was unlocked. The word ’twitter’ was trending in Calgary because so many Calgarians tweeted Twitter.”

Once that early hurdle was cleared, CPS got creative with its communication.

When the website that contained flood evacuation maps crashed, police were able to temporarily resurrect the page, take screen shots of the maps, and post them on image hosting website Flickr.

It also posted a running blog on its internal website, to keep all CPS employees apprised of the latest flood information.

The city capitalized on social media sources as well. The council’s Twitter account posted 1,483 tweets during the floods that were retweeted about 20,000 times. It had 54,000 followers before the event and 80,000 after it.

At the same time, the city of Calgary website had 1.1 million views and the 272 posts on its YouTube account were watched 460,000 times.

Social media quickly became a darling of the flood response, settling at the forefront of civic bodies’ priorities through a combination of being de rigueur and very efficient.

But despite CPS’s cyber-incarceration and the stratospheric traffic levels on the city’s online communication platforms, it does not herald a brave new virtual world for disaster response.

“It’s still very much a matter of opinion,” council crisis communications supervisor Ben Morgan says of a social versus traditional media debate.

“You can’t discount the ability to fly a helicopter over a community with loudspeakers and door to door knocking. Printing off a door hanger and leaving it on peoples doors.”

The benefits of social media’s reach, though, are obvious. You don’t need to wait until a newspaper publishes, the next edition of the TV news, or even the next radio bulletin. One mouse click and the information is disseminated. It is as instant as news gets.

Of course, it is only instant to the people plugged in to it and those around them. The technophobic among us will go without and wait for traditional media reports.

Social media is simply another medium through which to dispatch a message in a disaster. “Another tool in the tool box,” as Morgan likes to call it. But some tools are bigger than others.

“During the flood we certainly had more resources available to put more focus on our social media activity,” Morgan said.

“We were able to give social media during the crisis more attention than we would today for instance.”

Social media may have commanded a substantial space in the communications landscape, but it is a finite space. That is where social and traditional media will strike a balance. Disaster evacuations, for example, still require if not individual contact — someone knocking on your door and telling you to leave — at least some level of real world interaction. Say, evacuation notices posted on every door in a street.

But if you’re worried you’ll get left behind if you’re not at the ready with your Twitter-Facebook-Instagram-Tumblr-Pinterest-Flickr-capable smartphone when the next crisis hits, remember: every response to every disaster in the world up until about a decade ago was done without social media.

The city of Calgary has only had a social media presence for six years.

“Corporations and governments have handled crises quite effectively … before social media came into being,” city corporate communications manager Jacob George says.

The prospect of a world without social media, starting tomorrow, doesn’t bear thinking about, though.

“I’m so glad it’s a hypothetical question,” George said.

“I think we’re lucky.”

Valuable as it is, George doesn’t see social media encroaching on traditional platforms any more than it has. In future, social media disaster communications will be better, not more widespread.

“Social media was definitely one of the most effective ones but that’s not the only channel we used,” George said of the flood response.

“We rely quite heavily on the media to relay messages. Depending on the situation we do use different channels.”

No question, though, that disaster response communications have changed.

“It’s about two-way communications [and] being responsive and extremely informative in real time. Social media is the reason for these new rules. Not just that but these are the expectations of one’s market in a crisis and if you don’t meet those expectations you’ll find yourself in a multitude of different crises within the crisis.”

Calgary avoided these pitfalls, Agnes says.

“I was so impressed with Calgary. Not just their use of Twitter but their use of hashtags. Some cities use Twitter but they don’t use hashtags and then nobody can track and monitor (information) and easily find and funnel.

“The fact that they were savvy enough to use their mobile app. When your population already has your app in their pocket (on a smartphone) and you’re sending out push notifications ... it’s invaluable.”

Agnes consults with large organizations, including cities, on crisis management and said the level of preparedness varied greatly.

“Unfortunately, not all cities are as prepared as Calgary.”

In September the city won its first official recognition for its response to the June floods.

CPS picked up a gong at the Connected Cop Awards for best use of social media in a crisis, beating out the Boston police department, nominated for its efforts after the Boston Marathon bombing.

“Communications is everything, really,” Stephenson said.

“If you can communicate with the public and let them know here’s the relevant information you need to stay safe, people will be calm and things will go well.”

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